Dream Girl (1948)

June 17, 1948

THE SCREEN; Film Version of Elmer Rice's 'Dream Girl' at Paramount -- Betty Hutton in Lead

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Published: June 17, 1948

According to our information, Paramount paid a lot of coin for the screen rights to Elmer Rice's "Dream Girl"—more than $200,000, in fact. But, according to our observation, it has kissed both coin and "Dream Girl" good-by—a hapless osculation which neither it nor the public can afford. For the picture based upon this stage play, which came to the Paramount yesterday, could have been a cute one—had every chance of being, indeed—but is as dreary a botch of a good thing as we have ever seen.

The reasons are fairly obvious. In transferring Mr. Rice's play about a light-headed little cookie who spends half of her time in wild day-dreams, Paramount and Mitchell Leisen have done a couple of unforgivable things: they have "Hollywoodized" the whole idea and then have drowned it in a torrent of words.

In Mr. Rice's concept, the girl was a modest little doll whose glittering mental fabrications were in sharp contrast to her meek and mundane life. So, when she fancied herself a sleek adventuress or a hot-shot on the stage, the elegances of her imaginings but indicated the pallor of her real world. However, in the picture, the boys have started her off as a millionaire's airy daughter who lives in supreme luxury and to whom a Spanish castle would be nothing sensational or remote.

Consequently, there is slight contrast between the fantasies of this poor kid and the Hollywood razzle-dazzle amidst which she supposedly lives. And if anyone raises the issue that millionaires' daughters can dream, too, the answer is: "Sure, but there's small difference between Hollywood splash and fantasy." And that's one trouble with this picture: it all has the plushness of a dream.

Then, too, Mr. Leisen has forgotten that motion pictures should move and not bog down in soggy stretches of back-and-forth he-and-she talk. No matter how bright the conversation—and some of Mr. Rice's lines are bright—too much sitting down and talking usually makes for a wearying film. In this case, the dialogue, while breezy, has a certain laboriousness which is meagerly compensated by a few chunks of burlesque fantasy.

And, finally, it must be stated that Betty Hutton is a dud as the poor little millionaire's daughter who goes wandering in cuckoo-land. In those scenes when she tries to be poignant, she is drearily artificial. And in the slapdash performance of her day-dreams, her burlesque is too obvious and broad. Also her voice is disturbing. At one time, she'll talk like Betty Field, who played the original "Dream Girl"; the next minute, she'll sound for all the world like Ezra Stone as Henry Aldrich on the radio.

In her support, however, Macdonald Carey does a pretty good job as a candid newspaper fellow who eventually cuts into her dreams, and Patric Knowles, Virginia Field, Walter Abel and Peggy Wood patly fill other roles. All of their mingled endeavors appear of little avail. It strikes us as highly significant that no writers claim credit for the script.

On the stage at the Paramount are Phil Spitalny and his all-girl orchestra, plus Sibyl Bowan.